Bolivia threatens to close US embassy. EU Minster told President Maduro the orders came from the CIA

Bolivia's leader threatens to close US embassy

AFP Updated July 5, 2013, 12:12 pm

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia (AFP) - Bolivia's president threatened to close the US embassy as leftist Latin American leaders joined him in blasting Europe and the United States after his plane was rerouted amid suspicions US fugitive Edward Snowden was aboard.

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"We don't need a US embassy in Bolivia," he said. "My hand would not shake to close the US embassy. We have dignity, sovereignty. Without the United States, we are better politically, democratically."

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At a rally before the meeting, Maduro claimed that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had ordered France, Portugal, Italy and Spain to deny access to Morales's plane on Tuesday.

"A minister of one of these European governments personally told us by telephone that they were going to apologize because they were surprised, and that those who gave the order to aviation authorities in this country ... were the CIA," he said.

1. They are mighty paranoid in that part of the world..

President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela accused the United States and Colombia of conspiring to poison him. Announcing on May 30 that the “entire Colombian state is in agreement” to topple him from power in concert with the U.S., which has had a troubled relationship with the oil-rich South American for at least a decade while the now deceased President Hugo Chavez was in power. Maduro had a series of television interviews in which he denounced a “psychological operation” and “economic sabotage” directed against himself and Venezuela.

On the evening of May 30, Maduro said that Colombia has received “a team from Miami, with (former U.S. ambassador) Roger Noriega, only they can say how Maduro knows so much, but I have to say it: it has to do with my life; a team of experts has arrived with poison and they are prepared to come to Venezuela to inject me with the venom.”

Maduro continued along these lines, saying “No, not to make me die in one day, but to made me sick over the course of the coming two months. Do I stand back silently? I must denounce and confront it. They will not be able to do it; be assured that they will not be able to do it, because I am going to live many years and remain president of this country for many years.”

50. Glibbity, globbity, gloob.

58. This nation has spent 190 years making sure other nations in the region

Exist as mere banana republics. In a banana republic, there often are not elections, but dictators. Even when elections exist, the two candidates that have any chance of winning are basically spouting the same notions. The USA government gladly props up these dictators, as it benefits the Major corporations that operate in those countries.

Rule of law exists only for the upper portion of the society. For instance in Haiti, the dictator would be in his auto, being driven around town, and if he saw a store where he would like to "shop," his chauffeur would pull over and wait. Once in the store, Papa Doc would decide on what he wanted, and then waltz out of the store without paying. If he took two thirds of the store owners' inventory, well, that was just the merchants' bad luck for having things in stock the dictator liked.

Currently the public is in a froth in the nation of Honduras. Protesters who are out in the streets are dealt with very harshly. And if they are arrested, they may be tortured.

There is an interesting situation with regards to torture and Latin America. (South America too.) The US has a special school, down in Georgia, called the School of the Americas, and the various top military people come to this school and are instructed in various methods of keeping control over a population and torturing the dissidents. The School is also referred to as "The School of Assassins." You can find out quite a bit more by going here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13436.htm

15. When you have the history and in fact, the current experiences Latin America has with the US

you are NOT paranoid when you speak the truth about what this country is still trying to do in that region of the world.

Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about. As recently as 2002, the Bush War Criminals backed an attempted Coup against a Latin American Democratically Elected President. We just can't get over how Latin Americans have kicked out all of our old Dictator Friends in their countries, one after the other.

Learn some history before you call anyone in any country in South and Central America 'paranoid' for protecting themselves against their old enemies, and we WERE their enemies. It is so wonderful to see formerly oppressed nations regain their Independence and Sovereignty after so many decades of US Backed Dictators, like Pinochet.

They are finally prosecuting their War Criminals. Maybe one day we'll do the same thing.

5. The message has been sent: the US will do anything to get Snowden.

8. Yes indeed. And the "Dingbat factory" will do everything to excuse any extent

Yes indeed. And the "Dingbat factory" as Jeremy Scahill adroitly called it, will twist itself into inverted pretzels to excuse any extent the government goes to, no matter how illegal, how embarrassing internationally, or how damaging.

The US has STILL never apologized for the massacre of 250,000 Guatemalans, or the many coups, the starvation, the looting, the assassinations. And the mighty, pathetic *war on drugs* that's still killing thousands like they were rodents.

24. Are the rest of you going to show up here also?

If the poster has reason the believe the CIA could not have been involved, I would love to hear it. It would make for a lively debate. Instead the post was rude IMO and added nothing to the thread except inserting a jarring note. This happens to every thread about this spying scandal. If it is not rolling emoticons, it is snark. It is getting terribly tiring. This is my opinion. YMMV
Peace, Mojo

39. of course they are being impolite and communicating with bile. who are the 'dingbats,' btw?

the cia & us government have a long, documented, and malignant history in latin america. it has overthrown governments, killed heads of state, destroyed economies, taken over economies, and much else, including purposely infecting people with syphilis.

yet persons like yourself say that someone who raises the question of whether the us or cia might have put in a word with air traffic control is a 'dingbat'.

the dingbats are the people who rule out the possibility.

tuskeegee ended when i was in college. it is well within my living memory, not so terribly long ago. That was the US government, the CDC, and the US public health service who did that, allowed black men with syphilis to go untreated & die while 'studying' the process.

and that's just what we did to 'our own people,' within my lifetime. not ancient history.

22. Well, put it this way, the CIA was pretty busy in South and Central American for decades.

Reagan could tell you all about it, and Henry Kissenger, remember him? Do you know anything about the history of the CIA operations in countries all over the world??

Are you aware of the prosecution of CIA operatives very recently in Europe?

Maybe one day you might discuss issues rather than hurl insults. No one pays attention to internet insults, they are a dime a dozen, they pay attention to INFORMATION. If you know something about this then post it. If not, thanks for kicking the thread.

27. I posted absolutely no insult, so it's interesting that you and other DU'ers would perceive one

where it doesn't exist.

And having studied Guatemalan Huipils back in the day, I am very well aware of the CIA's involvement in Central & South America and General Rios Montt's atrocities and the School of the Americas abuses.

BUT I am also aware that Central & South American leaders make accusations against the USA as their stock in trade.

32. They make accusations based on FACTS. They made accusations against Bush's CIA in 2002 which

were CORRECT as Condi herself proved when she jumped the gun on that operation which the people foiled.

I have yet to see them make an accusation that didn't turn out to be true. Read any of the Latin American Wikileaks Cables? Lol, look, we have no credibility anywhere anymore. What would have restored SOME credibility would have been the prosecution of our War Criminals. But once we decided to move forward from those atrocities we lost all credibility except with our Dictator friends in places like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan et al.

Ever wonder why we have so many Dictator allies in the world and so few Democratically elected leaders? It's astonishing really when you start to look at who we support and who we try to remove from office.

I hope one day ALL Americans will wake up to what is being done in their name, as more and more are doing. Because only we can change these horrific foreign policies that are not just bad for the victims of them, but are weakening THIS country to the point where we see other regions of the world gaining strength while we are viewed more and more as a rogue nation.

33. the CIA gave Chavez cancer. Or do you believe that too?

48. I believe facts. The fact is that the CIA did back a failed coup against Chavez, that's all I needed

to know wrt Bush's intentions towards Latin American nations throwing out our old Dictator allies down there and the needs of the people of all of Latin American to ensure their safety from any more Imperial, Colonial interference.

Funny now that I remember. In 2002 you could not find a Democrat who did not slam, rightfully, that CIA backed coup. Then suddenly around 2004, the anti-Latin American Democratic Leaders contingency, prevalent ONLY, up to then, on Right Wing forums, began to show up on Democratic forums. It was remarkable.

19. Oh lawd...where to begin....

Maduro claimed that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had ordered France, Portugal, Italy and Spain to deny access to Morales's plane on Tuesday.

The CIA ordered those countries to deny airspace?

The CIA? Oh lawd

"A minister of one of these European governments personally told us by telephone that they were going to apologize because they were surprised, and that those who gave the order to aviation authorities in this country ... were the CIA," he said.

26. Got any proof of your 'opinion'? I am sure that every South American, and Central American leader

AND citizen for that matter, is very well acquainted with the CIA. Would you like me to provide you with some recent history of the CIA wrt Latin America? You seem astonished at the thought that the CIA would ever interfere in the affairs of Latin America? That is actually funny, in a tragic sort of way. Put it this way, we don't have much credibility when it comes to Latin America.

35. No, it isnt outlandish at all. It is in fact very believable. You haven't been keeping up with

52. Here's a bit of info...

"At the State Department, a spokeswoman, Jennifer Psaki, declined to say whether American authorities had asked other countries to deny airspace to the Bolivian plane. “I would point you to them to describe why they made decisions if they made decisions,” Ms. Psaki told reporters. "

30. Why are you wasting your time talking to these people?

Look at the title of this thread. It boils down to: Maduro/Morales/Correa/Fernandez said it, I believe it, that settles it. That's the attitude you will get and are getting. Any time spent trying to combat that sort of silliness is time wasted.
I've been staring at the State Dept's twitter feed. Zip on this. Know why? They've got way better things to do with their time than deal with these delusions. My own timeline, which is filled with folks from all over the world who deal with all sorts of things, lit up with this for about five minutes yesterday, and that was it. Nothing today, except for one joking reference to these presidents. No one thinks it's worth their time to even think about it. I come here, and 60% of the threads are about this nonsense.
Let's for instance look at Portugal. Their government has been trying to handle a seriously bad economic situation. Here's what you get when you search for the latest news from Portugal:

Not even Portugal's foreign minister bothered to give this more than five minutes' thought. He had way more serious problems to worry about. You'd never know that from looking at the front page of DU.
This place is rapidly becoming a bad joke.

65. I'm advocating for Morales to walk the walk.

37. I think that it is our government in D.C. that is too paranoid.

That is the reason for this massive gang surveillance-rape program in the first place.

It is our government that is over the top and out of control. And I am so sorry to say that.

The program has to go.

Has Obama lost control of the government? I cannot picture Obama deciding to stop the plane of the president of Bolivia from proceeding through air space and refueling without having to submit to a search.

44. I can't picture it either. This doesn't seem like his style. It's too uncouth.

The implications worry me.

During the last Venezuelan elections, when there was so much US interference, Colombian paramilitaries, Maduro (and before him Chavez) pointed their fingers at Otto Reich and his merry band of neocons. The day before the Morales plane incident, I bookmarked this because it worried me.

Otto Reich and other neocons heavily involved in the recent attempts to destabilize Venezuela have been very busy lately. One of their contacts, Alek Boyd, is another one who's been busy. And the same journalists who were subtly misrepresenting Latin American events before have now gone all out, in unison, with no subtlety whatsover. Remember the recent articles by Rory Carroll that Correa was cooling on offering Snowden asylum? All lies and cleverly re-arranged, snipped quotations, with old stuff mixed in with the new. The videos of the interview Correa gave that snake, disproving those "shameful lies" have repeatedly been posted underneath the article and sent to the journalist who wrote them. He refuses to correct his story. Correa finally denounced him for it publicly. Meanwhile the US and UK presses run with the lies. I don't know who's running this show, I think it's too chaotic and unrefined for Obama.

Anyway, why is Otto Reich being dragged out to weigh in on Morales taking Snowden to Bolivia in his plane, the day before all hell breaks loose?

The Bolivian president says he’d be pleased to give the NSA leaker asylum. And since he’s in Moscow, he could even give him a lift.

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“Bolivia is one of the countries where we have some of the fewest pressure points in Latin America,” says Otto Reich, a former top American diplomat who has worked on Latin America for more than 30 years. “We have not had an ambassador in Bolivia in five years.”

“He could just show up back home with Snowden and make a big splash.”

Bolivia has said it didn't receive an asylum request from Snowden. But for Morales himself, Snowden could provide a public-relations boost back home. A former Bolivian ambassador to Washington, Jaime Aparício Otero, said he wasn’t surprised Morales would hint that his government would grant Snowden asylum. “Granting asylum to someone like Snowden would guarantee him a place in the news cycle,” said Aparício. “He could just show up back home with Snowden and make a big splash. Snowden might prefer to go to another country, but if he has no other possibility, who knows?”

A plus for Snowden of settling in La Paz: It would be very difficult for the U.S. to extradite him. The 1995 treaty between the two countries contains an exception for political offenses. This exception is assumed under international law to include “purely political” crimes like espionage. Last month, the Justice Department charged Snowden at first in secret with violating the Espionage Act by disclosing defense information.

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Reich, the former American diplomat, says he thinks Morales might just be crazy enough to ferret Snowden to La Paz. “This guy is capable of harboring a Snowden,” he said. “It may also be that cooler heads in his government will prevail and say, ‘Wait a second, we have enough problems with America. Why are we doing this?’” Morales was scheduled to leave Moscow on Wednesday, according to Bolivia’s Ministry of Communication in La Paz.

Eli Lake is the senior national-security correspondent for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. He previously covered national security and intelligence for The Washington Times. Lake has also been a contributing editor at The New Republic since 2008 and covered diplomacy, intelligence, and the military for the late New York Sun. He has lived in Cairo and traveled to war zones in Sudan, Iraq, and Gaza. He is one of the few journalists to report from all three members of President Bush’s axis of evil: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.

A longtime correspondent for Newsweek, Mac Margolis has traveled extensively in Brazil and Latin America. He has contributed to The Economist, The Washington Post, and The Christian Science Monitor, and is the author of The Last New World: The Conquest of the Amazon Frontier.

49. Unfortunately for 'us', Latin America has built up its own alliance of nations in order to protect

all of Latin America from any return to the old Kissenger/Reagan/Death Squad days when countries were on their own and easily targeted by Western Imperialism. We loved our dictators like Pinochet, but they are all gone now, many of them on trial, a bit late, but better late than never, for the human rights atrocities they perpetrated, often with US support, and even encouragement, against their own people.

Bolivia, as a member of the Alliance of States, is NOT operating alone now. The US will have to deal with all of those nations who have already met and issued a declaration condemning the treatment of Bolivia's President.

It won't be the first time a US embassy closes. I suspect that we will give Bolivia and the rest of the leaders of Latin America, what they are asking for.

It's not the old Cold War days anymore, although you'd never know it from some of our foreign policies eg, still supporting Right Wing Dictators while preaching 'democracy'.

No doubt the Europeans will be asked to take the fall on this one and they will, puppets that they have become. There is a price to pay when you give up your own sovereignty, as many of those European nations have. But the world will not be fooled, and neither will Latin America. They will do what is most beneficial for their interests. There's always China to do business with. As Correa said tonight, 'they are treating us like colonies'. Except those days are gone, too bad we've been so busy colonizing the ME or we might have notices the developments in Latin America.

68. Fun Fact, we RUN the School of the Americas, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, conduct extraordinary renditions

torture people or have them tortured by some of our dictator friends, like the now 'former' Egyptian President, Mubarak, Karamov of Uzbekistan et al. Should I go on, since this is what you changed the topic to?

Another fun fact. We are no longer dealing with just one small, powerless Latin American nation. I like to keep discussions on topic whenever possible. THAT was the subject you raised, and to which I responded.

70. How many of them have taken action against

71. So what do you think of our record, the School of the Americas, eg, the current torture in its

151st day going on in Gitmo right now, of supporting dictators and of torture? You did raise the subject and once again jumped to something else. How about we finish one of the discussions you raise as diversions before going on to your next diversion? My mind can't keep up with the constant diversion attempts.

But since you raised the School of the Americas, do you have any idea why that disgusting place is still operating in a democracy?